Social networks in online environments are increasingly relied upon by individuals to engage and participate in various types of social activities and behaviors. Individuals use online social networks to facilitate friendly, casual, romantic, business relationships and to maintain connections and initiate dialogues with others. With the prevalence of high speed network connections to the Internet and the availability of mobile devices with wireless capabilities, the online environment has become one of the dominating mechanisms through which people communicate and connect with one another.
A content feed (or news feed) includes aggregated content items from a social networking system for display or presentation to a user of the social networking system, typically, at the user's home page. The content feed can be a continuously updated list of content items that can include, for example, stories from other users or pages that the user follows within a social networking system, status updates, photos, videos, links, application activities, and likes.
A content feed algorithm is responsible for selecting the particular content items to be included in a content feed. Today, social networking systems typically utilize one of two content feed algorithms for generating content feeds: a chronological feed algorithm or a discovery feed algorithm. Chronological feed algorithms typically select content items for a content feed based on a chronological order in which the content items occur. However, the selected content items are typically structured around topics that a user's friends or contacts are interested in rather than topics that the user is interested in. Conversely, discovery feed algorithms typically encourage content exploration based on a particular topic and thus, discovery feed algorithms typically select only content items for a content feed related to a particular topic.
Consequently, both chronological feed algorithms and discovery feed algorithms have limitations on selection of the optimal content for inclusion in a particular user's content feed.
Overall, the examples herein of some prior or related systems and their associated limitations are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Upon reading the following, other limitations of existing or prior systems will become apparent to those of skill in the art.